Plymouth postal votes fiasco – voters considering action

Postal votes, that scourge of Returning Officers – including our own Mark Williams who somehow forgot to get security markings printed on some of them (quite a lot of them) and then had them run off using EDDC’s own copying facilities without the markings. The second time postal votes have had problems here – last time by having the wrong voting instructions on them.

“A number of Plymouth voters are considering legal action under the Human Rights Act following ballot box chaos at June’s general election, the BBC has learned.

More than 1,500 postal ballots weren’t sent out, some voters reported being wrongly turned away at polling stations, and thousands of votes were missed out of the result of one constituency.

Labour’s Luke Pollard won Plymouth Sutton and Devonport with 23,808 votes. However, the actual figure including the missed votes cast in his favour was 27,283. He would still have won comfortably over Conservative Oliver Colvile.

The Electoral Commission is already investigating. Plymouth City Council says it will not comment until the result of an independent investigation is published in September.”